First Flight
by InNeedOfSaving
Summary: Post Crimson. A ficlet detailing the circumstances of the first time Clark flies, with some unexpected consequences. Clois.


**The obligatory "I-don't-own-any-of-the-characters" line: Of course Superman doesn't belong to me.**

**The obligatory "Please-review-on-my-story" line: They are nice after all.**

2-3-07

Clark was very confused.

He kept trying to tell himself that someone had put something in his drink at dinner or that he was sincerely losing his mind. There was no other way to explain it.

How else could he be feeling this way about Lois Lane?

They were sitting out in the loft in the barn, his so-called "Fortress of Solitude," playing a nice, friendly (ha, like anything involving Lois was "friendly") game of Scrabble. Clark was no Webster, but he was beating Lois soundly.

"Lois, there's no _e_ in _potato_," he said, correcting her spelling for the fiftieth time tonight.

"Are you kidding, Smallville?" she retorted, fixing him with her patented indignant stare. "Of course there is: po-ta-_toe_."

"Whatever you say, Dan Quayle," he replied, deciding to let her have that one; he was frankly tired of defending the English language.

She smiled smugly and tallied up her points for the word. As she did so, he stole another peek at her while pretending to be considering his letters. Something about the way the moonlight was playing on her hair…

_No, Clark,_ he told himself, tearing away his eyes and trying to figure out how to make the letters _y, o, n, i, n, a, _and_ g_ make a word. He looked at the board and saw an available _n_, and then he smiled. He carefully placed his letters on the old board and looked up at her in triumph.

_Annoying_.

She looked at the word, scowled, and leaned over to punch him in the arm as he laughed; like he always made sure to do when she hit him, he gave in a little so she wouldn't break her knuckles.

"Cute," she said, "real cute." But as she made to look back at her own letters, she stopped and gave him a strange look.

He tried his hardest to put on a nonchalant appearance, even though he knew he had been caught staring at her.

"You have something you want to say to me, Smallville?"

He shook his head innocently. "Why do you ask that?"

"Because you were just…oh, never mind," she concluded exasperatedly. _Men can be so dense sometimes._

Lois spelled her next word – _wierd_, which Clark had to correct – then Clark laid out the letters to spell _handful_. As he counted up his points, he thought of grabbing her hand, which was laying on the table, and pulling her across the gameboard into his lap and kissing her passionately. He paused to shake the visual out of his head.

The game was over in a few more rounds, with Clark easily handing Lois her butt on a platter. She tried to play it off as an "off night" as she flopped onto his comfortable old couch and stretched out. After putting away the game, he walked over to the couch and asked her to scoot over.

"In your dreams, Smallville. I'm comfortable."

So he turned around and began to lower himself onto her torso. She held up her hands and conceded.

"All right, all right! I'll move. Just don't put that thing on me." She sat up and scooted over and Clark plopped down next to her.

They sat on the couch for a few minutes in a silence that was growing increasingly uncomfortable. Clark brought his hands together and laced his fingers, trying to think of something to say or do. Lois rested her head against the back of the couch and closed her eyes. But just as she did that, she had a very graphic visual of her and Clark lying on this couch making out. Her eyes flew open widely; it was her turn to shake a disturbing image out of her head. Then she glanced at him.

He was sitting on his end, wearing his favorite red and blue plaid shirt, his worn-out farmer's jeans, and his ugly brown boots. But something was suddenly irresistibly attractive about him. Maybe it was his chiseled features, his blazing blue eyes, his biceps and pecs filling out that awful shirt rather nicely…

She got up and walked over to his telescope, desperate to find something else with which to occupy her mind. She casually gazed at different stars, focusing in occasionally on particularly bright ones. Lois had always loved the stars.

Clark walked over and leaned against the wall, crossing his arms and looking across the acres that had long been in the Kent family. Then he followed Lois' gaze up to the stars, wondering, as he had countless times, in which corner of the universe Krypton had been.

"Hey, Smallville, where's Jupiter?" Lois asked, interrupting his thoughts.

"To the left," he said simply.

She searched a few more moments, and obviously not finding it, she asked again, "Where to the left?"

Exhaling a small sigh of annoyance, he stepped away from the wall and uncrossed his arms. Looking out the window and zeroing in on the gas giant with his newly-developed telescopic vision, he came around to Lois' side, grabbed the telescope, and carefully maneuvered it to point in the right direction.

"See it?" he asked, releasing the telescope and looking down at Lois, whom he now noticed was much closer to him than he thought, wedged between him and the telescope.

She looked back at him hesitantly, almost afraid of what else she might think if she let her eyes linger on him too long. "Yeah," she said breathily.

Then, to his surprise, she didn't put her eye back to the lens. Without meaning to, Clark heard her heartbeat begin to quicken, and he knew that his was as well. Her eyes were locked on his as she dropped her hands from the telescope and turned around to face him.

"I never noticed how blue your eyes were," she said quietly, feeling heat radiating off of him in waves.

Clark suddenly felt rather self-conscious. "Do you like blue?" he asked, immediately kicking himself mentally for asking such a stupid question.

She smiled. "I like blue very much."

He smiled, strangely relieved. They continued to stare at each other for several moments, both of their minds reeling, full of thoughts that they knew should disgust them, but that at the moment seemed rather tempting.

Clark was the first to break out of the trance. He looked down at himself and again realized how close he was to her. He backed away, quickly saying, "I'm sorry, Lois. I didn't mean to do that. It was—"

But she silenced him by stepping forward and placing a finger on his lips. "Shut up, Smallville," she said just before she reached up and replaced her finger with her lips.

He looked down at her in shock before realizing how pleasant it was to actually kiss Lois and not be under the influence of red K. He closed his eyes and allowed her to explore his lips, wrapping his arms around her and pulling her up against himself. She stepped up on his feet to better reach him and wrapped her arms around his neck.

Clark didn't know what to think. After all, this was Lois, who had busted his balls from the moment she had met him. Though, admittedly, their meeting wasn't quite normal; he had been naked and lying in a cornfield when she had first laid eyes on him. And there had been moments in the past couple years where he'd had flashes of feeling toward her. However, he had always pushed it aside and counted it as leftover feelings for Lana. But this had nothing to do with Lana. He was kissing Lois, and he was glad that it was Lois he was kissing.

He was suddenly filled with such feelings of euphoria that he felt as if he could fly. He pictured his feet lifting off the ground, Lois tight in his arms, and floating out of the barn window and into the star-filled sky. That's when he felt something brush the top of his head, causing him to open his eyes and look up.

His head was brushing against the rafters of the barn ceiling. Alarmed, but careful not to break the kiss, lest Lois suspect something and open her own eyes, Clark hazarded a glance down and saw that they were floating; it was only a few feet, but they were floating nonetheless. And he had no idea how to get back down without crashing.

_Well, happy feelings got me up here, so maybe sad ones will get me down._ Then he rebuked himself. _This isn't _Peter Pan_. Just will yourself back down._

He closed his eyes and pictured himself floating back gently to the wooden floor and touching down softly enough that Lois would never suspect. He was relieved when he felt solidity beneath his feet again. But he opened his eyes to make sure.

Terra firma.

Having successfully avoided many awkward questions from Lois, Clark let himself back into the kiss.

After several more minutes, Lois finally pulled away and looked up at him, half horrified, half ecstatic. Then she cleared her throat, looked down, and extracted her arms from his neck. Backing up a couple steps, she smoothed down the front of her shirt, her eyes fixed on the floor, and cleared her throat again.

"That was…um…unexpected."

He crossed his arms over his chest and smiled smugly. "You could say that."

She looked up at him, her eyes growing wide and serious. "This doesn't leave the barn, you got that?"

He feigned innocence. "Now, who would I tell?"

She slapped her thighs exasperatedly. "Oh, I don't know, but _Chloe_ immediately comes to mind."

His smile grew wider. "And you don't want her to know that you made out with me again, this time of your free will, is that it?"

"Clark, this really isn't funny. I don't know what came over me. What exactly does your mom put in her meatloaf anyway?"

"Oh, I forgot to tell you," said Clark, replacing his smile with an apologetic look. "She liked to include drugs that make you all hot and bothered for the person that you're _least_ attracted to."

She crossed her arms, cocked her head, and narrowed her eyes. "Ha ha." She studied his face as if trying to determine whether or not be would really keep his silence. After several moments, she seemed satisfied, so she exhaled and reached over to grab her denim jacket.

"I should be heading back to the Talon. Chloe will ask questions if I'm gone too long." She put on the jacket and turned toward the stairway. "Catch you later, Smallville."

When she was halfway down the stairs, Clark called out to her. "Hey, Lois!"

She turned around. "Yeah?"

His face appeared over the railing. "I was lying, you know."

"About what?"

"The 'person that you're least attracted to' part. You're not all that bad."

She smirked. "You're not all that bad yourself. 'Night, Smallville."

"Good night, Lois."

As he watched her leave the barn, he had a new mental image: he and Lois flying through the night sky over acres of fields, gazing up at the stars and occasionally at each other.

But this time instead of shaking it from his head, he smiled, quite enjoying the thought.


End file.
